[News] [Rival] Microsoft Dumped by Nikon Over 'IP', Suffers Also

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Nikon exits Microsoft photo contest

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| Nikon has withdrawn its support for a photography contest hosted by computer
| giant Microsoft after a row over potential copyright infringement.
|
| [...]
|
|
| In a statement issued to Pro Imaging, Microsoft said: 'We have since taken
| steps to obtain the rights to use every image to be featured in the
| subsequent stages of the Iconic Britain competition.'
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| Imagine, though, a day when open source programs run well on Windows. Given
| that the installed base of Windows is currently much larger than that for
| GNU/Linux, this means that many open source developers are likely to start
| paying more attention to Microsoft's platform, even to the detriment of
| GNU/Linux versions. As a result, some coders will be more amenable to
| including “optimised” technologies like Silverlight in their Windows
| versions. And so it will begin: the gradual pollution of free software with
| proprietary elements and software patents.
|
| If Microsoft's old approach can be likened to Hamlet's attempt to “take arms
| against a sea of troubles” - a futile effort - it's new, more subtle, tactic
| might be characterised as poisoning that sea. As we know from real life,
| that's all-too easy, and particularly hard to prevent, especially as it can
| occur very slowly and imperceptibly to begin with.
|
| To prevent the poison building up to noxious levels, open source projects
| need to be extremely wary when responding to Microsoft's chummy enquiries, or
| they may ultimately find themselves repeating Hamlet's more famous quotation
| from the opening of the same speech.
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| is Mono's role in the deal that of a hook to make customers write
| .NET applications because they can be run on Linux - only to find
| later on that they are armless or legless because of a change in
| the .NETspecifications, a change which Microsoft decides not to
| make public?
|
| [...]
|
| And here we have an individual who decides to replicate one of
| the proprietary company's development environments - for reasons
| best known to him alone - and keeps telling people that the reason
| he's doing it is so that he can pull people over from the
| proprietary company's side to his side!!!
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